1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for establishing a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) connection between Mobile Stations (MSs) in a wireless communication system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for establishing a P2P connection between MSs that share resources of the wireless communication system instead of using separate P2P communication resources in order to perform P2P communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a wireless communication system, in order to communicate with other Mobile Stations (MSs), a transmitting MS makes a call to a receiving MS through a wireless communication network regardless of a distance from the receiving MS. That is, a connection with the receiving MS is established via a Base Station (BS), a mobile switching center, or the like constituting the wireless communication network regardless of the distance between the transmitting MS and the receiving MS. However, if the distance between the transmitting MS and the receiving MS is very close, a direct communication not through the BS may be more appropriate. Direct communication is referred to as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication. Various services can be provided through the P2P communication, such as, transmission of a file, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video conference, etc. The P2P communication can provide the same service quality as that conventionally provided by the BS.
The MSs use a frequency band for P2P communication that is different from a frequency band allocated to the wireless communication system for communication by the BS. In addition, to process the additional frequency band, a separate Radio Frequency (RF) transmitting/receiving apparatus is used. For example, Infrared Data Association (IrDA) communication, Bluetooth communication, etc., are used in the P2P communication. When the P2P communication and the wireless communication use the same frequency band, bandwidth efficiency can be further improved by flexibly adjusting each transmission band, if interference is present, through effective resource management. Research on P2P communication in association with a Wireless world Initiative NEw Radio (WINNER) system is currently in progress in Europe.
When an MS is initialized for P2P communication, two types of initialization can be considered according to a location and type of a counterpart MS and a characteristic of the data requested. That is, in a first case, the MS knows a location of the counterpart MS, and in a second case, the MS does not know the location of the counterpart MS. If a unique number or location of a counterpart MS is known, P2P initialization can be performed with relative simplicity. However, if the P2P communication is desired with one of a plurality of unspecified MSs or if the unique number of a counterpart MS is known but the location thereof is not known, the initialization may be relatively complex. In other words, since a transmitting MS does not know information (e.g., a location, a state, a reception availability, etc) about a receiving MS, in some cases, initialization cannot be performed for P2P communication.